RENAN LARUE

Renan Larue is an assistant professor of French Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He authored, amongst other books, Vegetarianism and Its Enemies, the first history of the vegetarian –and vegan– movements ever written in French, a history that can trace its roots back to antiquity. For this book, he received the 2015 La Bruyère prize at the French Academy for best book in moral philosophy.

His current work is about 18th-century literature (especially Voltaire and Rousseau) and “Vegan Studies,” a new field of research he is actively developing at UCSB. Since 2016, he's taught a class on the subject, adopting a highly multidisciplinary approach which includes theology, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, economics and literature.

For him, what is at stake with veganism (and carnism, its opposite) goes far beyond food choices or habits. It relates to the role we should play within the universe, to our duties towards animals, the environment, and future generations.